The Manuscript (There Are No Words)

The writer finally found the motivation in himself to sit at his desk and write. He always sat at his desk to write because everywhere else felt unclean, everywhere else actually was dirty. This was the first time in months that he found he was able to sit there. He slouched back in the chair getting himself a bit more comfortable and began to day dream. The writer typically tries to day dream about what he writes before he commits anything to paper. So in this quiet, aloof manner he spends the next hour. He had dreams of knights, wizards, and dragons, and the entire world in which they belong. When he woke up from his day dream he was sure of what he wanted to write. It would be a simple story of a knight seeking fame by slaying a dragon. Only the knight finds out that the dragon is an intelligent being and instead seeks knowledge from him.
When he awoke from his day dream he dimmed the lamp to the point of near darkness. Slowly and contemplatively, he touched his pencil to a small dusty notebook labeled “Writing”. At first the writing came to him in slow stops and starts but then all at once his thoughts flowed freely. As time passed he felt the momentum of his craft and moved towards the seat of his chair. Energy filled his face as he reached the climax of his short story. The dragon was just about to reveal his intelligence to the knight. Then all in one fit he finished his story. He felt proud of himself, he hadn’t finished a story in the past few years and even when he did, it wasn’t at this length.
He took one look over his short story manuscript and felt one last ounce of pride before he went to go sleep. He had dreams not about fantastical worlds but this time of success that he had always wanted to attain. He had money, he had notoriety, and more than anything else, he was happy.
He woke up feeling as proud as he did in his dreams and he went over to desk to look over at his work again. He was pleased with what he had done and wanted to bask in the accomplishment. He had put hours of work in to a manuscript and for once his feelings matched the work he put into it. He opened up his still dusty notebook and looked at the blank pages. There were no words on the page. He thought to himself if he had dreamed it all, and he came to the decision that he probably had. There were no words on his manuscript and he was more content with dreaming than actually writing. “But maybe I ripped it out” he thought to himself. He proceded to look around his office to find nothing.
Defeated, the writer decided to take a walk. “It would all make sense after a walk” he thought out loud. While he walked down the green forested path, he realized that he did probably prefer daydreaming to writing. Daydreaming was safe for him; everything he daydreamed was exactly as he wanted it. When he wrote he was always unable to get what he envisioned on paper. Daydreaming also made him happy. He walked some more and passed a young couple. He smiled and took a moment to breath in the fresh air. He was clearly upset at himself, it was all over his aging face. He walked down a lonely little path and thought as he took a moment to smell a strikingly bright red rose,“I daydreamed a moment in my life that was so rewarding I would rather be back in them.” My fantasy worlds were always better than reality. Maybe it’s about time I stop daydreaming and start living what life I have left.”

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Published by Austin L. Wiggins

Austin L. Wiggins is a fiction writer, and essayist from Southern California. He runs a blog called Writings By Ender. Austin is also co-creator and writer for the literature magazine “Beautiful Losers”.
View all posts by Austin L. Wiggins

Thanks for the follow. I have just read all your stuff in one go and really enjoyed it. I loved this one in particular and it certainly encapsulates that feeling for me. I have just started giving my blog a go again and I would be thrilled if I was putting out pieces like yours. Keep at it!

Thanks for deciding to follow my blog.
I dropped by to read a few of your stories, and I must say I really enjoyed doing so.

If I could offer one point of critique, it would be that you might want to consider mixing up the sentence structures you use, especially in this story, since you rely quite heavily on simple sentences.

Other than that I could not point my finger at anything I did not like in your stories. They were based on great ideas, had nice descriptions, and seemed quite thoroughly edited.

Been there! I keep a notebook by my bed so when I wake up in the middle of the night with a good idea I actually have a chance to get it down on paper. Works maybe half the time! Keep writing. You have a great sense of timing and humor!

This is a nice theme, getting into psychology and the psyche of the character. A help to writing well is to read widely and not only contemporary works, since so many past writers were masters. Then you can analyze what makes their writing powerful or particular aspects of different authors that you find most compelling and then apply it in your own work. In the middle of your story (paragraphs 3 & start of 4) you have a lot of sentences beginning with subject pronouns. if you wish to vary your sentence structure more, it could be helpful to buy a book of advanced grammar/style which will illustrate at a glance various sentence structure types. Then you can try plugging them in and substituting them to see how a sentence flows and what the effect each grammar construction might have on the mood or meaning.

there are no words to describe how much i relate to what you have written here..brilliant!! it takes courage and above all constant motivation to write anything you dream about.. i suggest you read Charles Bukowski’s “so you want to be a writer?”

Absolutely love this. You have an attractive style of writing, and coincidentally enough we have the same theme on WordPress! Haha ^_^ Keep up the good work, can’t wait to read your other works! 🙂
~ serendipitouswriter

Thank you for following me! I really enjoyed your story…and found it to be very true for myself! I was writing the other day and I told my husband my story was so sad. He looked at me like I was crazy and said…”Then change it! You’re in control!” I think we would all be better off if we took that statement and applied to our lives.